Sky Views: Are 88,000 inmates in US jails innocent?

Greg Milam, US Correspondent

I have reported on two monumental miscarriages of justice in the last fortnight.

One man, who a judge said should never have been convicted of murder, served 32 years. The other was declared factually innocent of attempted murder after serving 20 years.

Andrew Wilson and Marco Contreraswere both remarkably sanguine about what had happened to them, preferring to focus more on the future than the past.

But, as they put shattered lives back together, their stories leave a huge nagging question - how many more are there?

America's justice system is quick to lock people up, slow to recognise mistakes and too often more concerned with protecting its own.Greg Milam

The National Registry of Exonerations lists every known case since 1989 in which someone was wrongly convicted and later cleared of all charges. The current total is 2,006.

The registry's editor, Samuel R. Gross, was part of a study in 2014 which found that 4% of those sentenced to death in the US turned out to be innocent - that's one in every 25.

Death sentences do, as he points out, get much greater attention but let's just assume this percentage of wrongful conviction applies across the board.

There are 2.2 million people in prison in the US - and 4% of this is 88,000.

But who listens to those in prison who claim to be innocent?

In 2012, we filmed an interview on death row in Texas with Linda Carty. Born on the Caribbean island of St Kitts, she is a British subject and wanted UK support for her appeal against a murder conviction.

She has the backing of the charity Reprieve, and a compelling and heart-breaking story of what appeared to be a miscarriage of justice.

But a judge refused her a retrial even after recognising that prosecutors had failed to disclose false witness testimony.

And so she remains in a cell in the women's prison in Huntsville, one of six women on death row in Texas, awaiting the state's decision to end her life.

Just one of the thousands who say they are innocent - and could well be.

Image:Andrew Wilson served 32 years in prison for a crime he says he did not commit

America's justice system is quick to lock people up, slow to recognise mistakes and too often more concerned with protecting its own.

When you add in the disproportionate number of minorities in the prison system, the dysfunction mounts further.